Would any of us be here if it weren’t for them?
Who was Wendell W. Anderson, the twenty-four-year-old young man from my generation who was killed in Vietnam? “Wendell W. Anderson, SP4, U.S. Army, Vietnam, Jan. 13, 1944, Aug. 26, 1968,” his tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery, read. Just one tombstone amidst acres and acres of tombstones, all white marble, planted among silent, still, neat rows in the company of others.
Who was Wendell Anderson? Where was he from? What schools did he attend? What was his life like? Did he have brothers and sisters? Did he play sports? Was he married, or did he have a girlfriend he intended to marry when he returned from the jungles of Vietnam?
Those were my thoughts as I looked at the young man’s tombstone.
I relayed those thoughts to one of my sons, and I said, “Isn’t it something that I didn’t have any questions running through my head about whether the young man maybe had been in trouble with the law, or that he was black, white, yellow, red or brown? Would it matter?” I asked. Did it matter he was of German, Japanese, African, Greek, Italian, or any other ethnic decent? “The guy is dead … dead at twenty-four years of age.”
Who was Wendell Anderson? Was he like the young medic from Correctionville, Phillip Lou Baker, age twenty, who was killed in Vietnam? Was he raised on a farm like Baker? Did an Army Chaplain go to Anderson’s home with a ceremonial U.S. Flag and a message of condolence, as I witnessed when this happened at the Baker home in Correctionville? I was sent to record the sad story as a television reporter.
“Come outside with me, please,” Phillip Baker’s father said to me as I followed him outdoors, and stood alongside the farm home the Bakers lived. ‘You raise a son, love him, watch him grow, then leave, and there isn’t even a body returned; it’s there in that country [Vietnam],” Phillip’s Dad said. The father was beyond tears. He must have cried over and over again when he first received the letter stating his son’s death.
I didn’t return inside the Baker home. I got in my car and returned to Sioux City. I could not cover the story. I returned to the television station and told my boss that I had no film or a report to give. I couldn’t do it.
For years the image of Phillip Baker’s mother and father and brother—the latter a farm kid himself at the time—stayed in my mind. A year ago, I called on the Baker family. I learned that Phillip’s parents died some time ago. His brother still worked the farm he was brought up on. That’s all I could learn. Just think of the emptiness Phillip’s mother and father felt the rest of their lives until they died. Losing a loved one.
